Ormo

Two years ago I built a carputer for my Seat Ibiza, I had little support from online groups etc and had to rely on my own ideas etc for most of the actual install and some software. It has worked well enough for me! But now I'm getting a new car! A Peugeot 206 and I plan to make a all new carputer! This time its gonna be great cos now there are sites like this!

So yeah, heres what I have. P200, 96Mb RAM, 10Gb HDD. I plan to run Windows 98 for simplicity combined with economy. I was thinking about Linux, but I would have to do most of my coding and scripting from scratch to achieve what I want. Previously my screen was a 20x4 backlit alphanumeric LCD driven by a winamp plugin, this time I have aquired a little 4" LCD for some visuals, however, as I wont be able to fit a lot of text on such a small screen I plan on keeping the alphanumeric LCD for current playing info etc.
For input I have used a numeric keypad, I wrote my own software in delphi to capture keypresses and control winamp this way. I hope to use the same device for input.
To get sound to the head unit I have been using an FM modulator and did some short range broadcasting (boot/trunk to dash )
Using a 300W inverter to convert 12V to 240V (In uk) and standard pc power supply.
So yeah, this is my kit! I don't want to spend anymore cash, I can't really afford it....for now...

I would love to make use of WMPs media library functions to organise music as it was becoing a pain in the butt to organise my own. I have noticed some software on the software page uses WMP as a player, but I have not been able to figure out how to use my LCD along with it.

If anyone has any suggestions/ideas/links that might help me in my redesign I'd be v grateful!

MP3Car.com

 

Evo Designs

sorry i am also a noobe and trying to learn as much as i can and i would like to know waht you mean by "I wrote my own software in delphi to capture keypresses and control winamp this way. I hope to use the same device for input" a whats delphi and can i get a copy so i could eith edit yours or try to understand enought to write my own stuff

god_of_cpu

If your up to some programming you can download the windows media player sdk http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...t/winmedia.asp

It is a very comprehensive SDK and will let you embed a media player in your own program or just access its features. It will let you access all the media collection features found in the fulll blown media player. Its just a COM component so you can probably use it in delphi, although support for it will be extremely limited then.

Ormo

god_of_cpu,
I downloaded the SDK a while back, I just haven't had much of a chance to look through it much yet. I have played with using the WMP ActiveX control though, it seems to work relatively well.

evo designs,
Delphi is a visual version of Pascal made by Borland. Its like Visual Basic, only its a bit more powerful than BASIC (people might want to disagree, but its true ) and Borland also give some older versions away free ( ). Also it always compiles single file EXEs (unless you use VB components..)
Anyways, what i did with delphi was pretty basic, I just created a single form project and wrote a KeyPress function (it's called every time a key is pressed) that discerned what key was pressed and then performed an appropriate action (using the WinAmp 2.x API). And I used Mike Lynch's (think thats the guy) LCD Plugin to display.

What I plan on doing this time is writing code of my own to extract the playing details and fire them out the parallel port to the LCD and also to use WMPs song organisation. Though reformatting the data to be suitable for a 20x4 LCD might be "fun"... I might end up sticking with WinAmp and writing my own organiser... Or I might just sell my LCDs on EBay and use the cash to buy a lilliput

MP3Car.com